In 1988, a time of the most massive repression the country has ever known, the 500th anniversary of the ‘discovery’ of South Africa by the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias was commemorated in the small seaside resort of Mossel Bay. Three white actors in a rowing boat landed on a ‘whites-only’ beach, there to be welcomed by seven more whites wearing curly wigs and painted black. This simple ceremony was applauded by some 2,000 people, including the then President, P. W. Botha, in full regalia, with his cabinet. The spectacle would have been complete were it not for the absence of the local black population – an action precipitated by a ‘Coloured’ high-school teacher, who had warned the authorities that unless beach apartheid were ended, he and his pupils at least would not welcome Mr Dias back.

This event demonstrates a number of things. First of all, it suggests the complex absurdity of race politics in the country. Secondly, it registers the importance of theatrical representation or performance, broadly defined, in constructing a people's view of themselves – in this case, that of the white ruling class. And thirdly, it reveals the peculiar and persistent nature of the colonial imagination in a society which, although nominally independent, has long continued to exhibit the typical features of a colonial culture. Not only do the whites enact a version of the country's history which begins with the arrival of the Europeans; but the social, political, and legal superstructures they have set up exclude black people, so defined, even from this representation.